Containers
Transloading vs cross-docking: what is the difference?
Four words describe what happens to freight between the port and your customer. They overlap, and most real jobs use more than one.
Transloading
Moving freight from one kind of equipment to another. Most often that means from a sea container into a 53 ft highway trailer so it can carry on by road. A 53 ft trailer holds more than a 40 ft container, so transloading can also cut the number of trucks you need.
Devanning
Unloading a container. It is the first step of transloading. For a floor-loaded container it means unloading the cartons by hand and building them onto pallets.
Break-bulk, or deconsolidation
Splitting one container into separate shipments, usually because the freight is going to different customers or locations.
Cross-docking
Moving freight from an inbound truck or container straight to an outbound truck, with little or no time in storage. The freight is checked, sorted by destination and loaded onto the right run. It does not have to start with a container: supplier trucks and local pickups can be cross-docked too.
Which one do you need?
- One container, one destination: transload it into a trailer.
- One container, many customers: devan and break-bulk it, then deliver each order.
- Freight from several places going out together: cross-dock it and consolidate.
- Freight that is not ready to ship: put it into warehousing until it is.
Most jobs are a mix: devan, sort, cross-dock and deliver, all at one dock.
Doing it under one roof
At our Surrey dock all four happen in one place, and the freight leaves on our own trucks. That means one company, one invoice, and nobody handing your freight to another carrier. Read more about cross-docking and container transload.